X-Men: Days Of Future Past Japanese Commercial Shows Off New Footage

Without any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, it stands to reason that the X-Men are huge in Japan. Why wouldn’t they be? To American eyes, they’re less-conventional groups of super-powered heroes and villains with switching alliances and distinct, colorful physical appearances, borne out of the atomic era. It certainly helps that the last time we saw Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, he was cutting up ninjas in the land of the rising sun. It’s not a surprise that X-Men: Days Of Future Past would have a potentially huge presence there.

So it goes for this Japan-centric look at the upcoming hero mash-up, as a Japanese television ad for the film’s release can be seen above. There’s some new footage in the clip, though you really have to avoid from blinking to miss it, and it’s not anything overly substantial. The footage hijacks the Hans Zimmer score from The Thin Red Line to advertise a movie that, frankly, doesn’t look ready for advertising. What is everyone looking at so forlornly? What is everyone yelling about? What is this movie about?

So far, all the footage we’ve seen from the film screams, "We’re not done with any special effects shots yet!" Given that this is meant to be FOX’s second most expensive film of all-time, you’d think they’d have something to show at this point. Maybe a Sentinel? Or does the film take place in only a couple of locations, mostly involving characters having minor conversations and interactions? It wouldn’t be the first time Singer made a film that was super expensive but light on action.

The story for the seventh onscreen X-Men adventure involves the core group from the original trilogy in a (not too?) distant future where they are being hunted by the government. Professor X and Magneto somehow find a way to send Wolverine’s spirit back into his old body in the 1970’s, where he can prevent a mutant-based tragedy that presumably kick-starts Bolivar Trask’s (Peter Dinklage) Sentinel program. The question that remains is, in the current X-Men timeline, is that war-torn future destined to happen, as soon as two years after The Wolverine according to that film’s post-credits stinger? Or is Wolverine headed into the past to undo a wrinkle in time that’s already been created by a previous time traveler?

The fact that the story leads into X-Men: Apocalypse suggests that perhaps things don’t go too well for the mutant group, and the somber tone of this and the other ads for the film seem to emphasize the heavy nature of the story. Maybe there’s something about that giant Japanese text in muted cobalt blue that’s pushing that angle. Maybe it’s just the idea that Marvel’s merry mutants are doomed to keep drawing the unlucky straw. X-Men: Days Of Future Past opens May 23rd.